It used to be that when I was having trouble writing, the best remedy was to read. It reminded me that I loved words.  I loved giving myself over to someone else’s vision, to being led, to being thrilled by a turn of phrase, a clever twist, being surprised that words on a page could evoke emotions usually reserved for real life. 

When I seemed unable to do any of those things myself, I sat at someone else’s feet and let them school me. It was liberating, nourishing, invigorating.  

Lately, it has had the opposite effect. The more I read, the less I want to write.  In the last few years, the non-fiction writing I have consumed from newspapers, magazines, Twitter (lots of Twitter) has left me exhausted and for the first time in my life, at a loss for words. 

Two things have happened that have made the thought of opining about anything as appealing as root canal.  Twitter is at the heart of both.  

Ironically, I started on Twitter because of  my writing.  I was told that to be successful, I had to build my platform, and social media was the way to do it.  I quickly realized I’m just not a Twitter kind of gal.  Other than promoting my blog, I couldn’t think of a thing to say.  But, I did get sucked into the vortex of other people’s opinions, hot takes and flame wars. And all those voices have just drowned out my own.  Like someone who spends all day working in a candy factory, the last thing I wanted to do was have a chocolate bar when I got home.

It’s not just exhaustion, it’s also fear. Because of the nature of Twitter — of any kind of public discourse, really — I am loath to peek out of my foxhole for fear of drawing fire.  I have seen what happens to people to wade into that battlefield and it ain’t pretty.

When I think about it, there are things I want to say, but I am afraid.  I want to set the record straight about things I know are not true.  I want to present another side to a story that is being presented as incontrovertible fact.  I want to come out of the closet and say, “You know those people you think are stupid/evil/enemies of all that is good and holy — well, that’s me.” This leaves them with two choices:  reevaluate their assessment of those people, or reevaluate their assessment of me.  I fear it would be the latter. 

I think I know what I can expect from the world at large.  But it becomes particularly difficult when it comes to people who share my faith.  I’ve come to expect vitriol and closed minds in the public square.  It seems people have retreated to their own fortified castles where only the like-minded are welcomed and the thick stone walls ensure no other voices penetrate.  I fight hard, not always successfully, against this in my own life.  When I come across a story that fits a little too perfectly with my ideas about things, I try to stop and see if it is really true.  Often it is not, and I am chastened.  I fight hard to keep the drawbridge down, lest someone with whom I disagree cares to visit. 

But I have a higher standard for people in the body of Christ.  Not that they’re perfect saintly people all the time.  I know I am not, and I know they aren’t either.  But, I do expect some shared notion of grace and mercy, some expectation of mutual respect simply because we are both children of God.  Alas, I have been disappointed many times.  Disappointed in how others spoke to and of me.  Disappointed in how I treated others.  

I once belonged to a Christian organization that preached the virtue of diversity, and rightly so.  But when I dared to transgress the accepted zeitgeist, I learned that this didn’t include diversity of opinion.  When I tried to express my (unacceptable) views, I was called vile names, the worst being “not a true Christian.” I expected that from cable news.  I didn’t expect it from the gathering of saints.  So, I stopped speaking and I stopped listening. Another fracture in the body of Christ. And wasn’t Satan pleased!  

In fact, I wonder if this era of fighting like cats in a bag isn’t Satan’s finest hour. Encouraging our darkest impulses, especially those who belong to the Lord, hoping to peel the sheep from the shepherd. Fomenting fear, keeping people slinging mud, hurling epithets, using primal screams in the place of reasoned discourse.  Or worse, scaring people into silence and silos.  

“The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.” (Job 1:7)

It is has ever been thus.

By now, you may have heard of the woman whose neighbor plowed her driveway — unasked — which occasioned an op-ed about the perfidy of “Trumpites” as she calls them. 

While she grudgingly acknowledged that it seemed like a nice thing to do, she was having none of it.   She went on to say that being nice is exactly the tactics that evil monsters often used — she cites Hezbollah, Louis Farrakhan and of course, Nazi collaborators.

All because neighbors were kind to her.  

It is fair to assume from her essay that she doesn’t know these people. And yet, she knows all she needs to:  they supported a politician she detests. Do you suppose her neighbors know her political leanings as well?   And that they — gasp — were kind to her nonetheless?  I suppose it is possible in this age of conspiracy thinking, that they did it just as a cover for their dastardly deeds, but what if they thought of her as more than her politics?  

This is inconceivable to the adherents to identity politics.  Identity politics reduces all of us to one dimension — our politics, our gender, our sexuality, our race, our finances.  It is a closed and airless universe in which we are only and ever one thing — no subtleties, no contradictions or human unpredictability. It is a world totally devoid of nuance, completely lacking in grace.  

Which brings to mind a story from long ago, before Trumpites or the Resistance, before Proud Boys or Antifa.  It appears there was a man who was robbed and beaten and left for dead by the side of the road. People of his religion and ethnic makeup saw him and left him there.  But someone — someone who he was supposed to despise and who was supposed to despise him,– stopped, gave him first aid, took him to a safe place and paid for his health care.  

By the code of the perpetually outraged, this man should have awakened and spit in his rescuer’s face.  He should have said, “Boy, isn’t that just like a Samaritan — making nice all the while supporting murderous regimes and heretical religious beliefs.”  He could have said I know all I need to about this, this deplorable, and he can’t fool me with his good deeds.  For that matter, his rescuer might have said the same.  He could have said “Isn’t it just like those Jews to get themselves beaten up and expect someone to come to their aid.”  

But that’s not the story Jesus told.  He told the story of the Good Samaritan because someone asked, “Who is my neighbor?”  You see, these divisions and animosities are old news, as old as humanity.  As long as we’re satisfied that labels tell us all we need to know about each other, we will live in a brutal world of mutually-assured destruction.  

Stop right now and read Luke 10:25-37.   The parable was occasioned by a simple question:  “Who is my neighbor?”  In other words, who do I have to love?  And equally important, who do I allow to love me? 

Those who have ears, let them hear.  

I got my first COVID vaccine shot the other day, ending weeks of wrestling with temptation.  

You see, until last week, the only way to even register for the vaccine  — much less snag a coveted appointment — was to check the box that said I was 75 or older.  Which I am not. 

I was, however, extraordinarily anxious to get the vaccine because I believed it would give me some peace of mind. Being diabetic, I believed it would protect me from serious complications of COVID. I believed I would feel less restricted, less frustrated, perhaps more comfortable getting a massage or going on vacation, both of which I am desperate to do. 

My mouse hovered over that box and I thought of all the reasons it would be OK to just click and be on my way to vaccineland:

• I may not be 75, but I am in the next group up, so it’s really just a matter of timing.
• There are plenty of people who don’t even want to be vaccinated and I do!
• Relying on local government to manage this process fairly and efficiently is absurd. After all, these are the people who brought us the DMV.   
• It seems to be the only thing that will calm my anxiety and ease the frustration that boils over at the slightest provocation.

I didn’t click the box.  It wasn’t just the threat of prosecution for making a false statement, though I’m enough of a Girl Scout that it did spook me. It was a nagging feeling that the story I was telling myself about why it was OK was pretty weak tea.

Recently, a spin class instructor made national news by bragging that she had gotten a vaccine by claiming she was an “educator” and urging others to do the same. What story did she tell herself, I wonder?  

Or how about the large donors and board members of hospitals that have been allowed to jump the vaccine line?  What did they tell themselves as they rolled up their sleeves? 

Do I even need to mention the politicians who have flagrantly broken their own COVID quarantines? I imagine it took some impressive mental gymnastics — and chutzpah — to send a tweet from a resort in Cabo urging people to stay quarantined in their own homes, unable to even go to loved ones’ funerals.    

All of this got me thinking:

I believe that, as a rule, people don’t do things they think are wrong.  Oh, they may acknowledge that there is some rule or law or commandment against what they want to do.  But they think there are several good reasons why none of them apply to them.  I believe this is true for the whitest of white lies, and for the most heinous of crimes.  We always have a good reason for what we want to do, rules be damned.  

When my grandmother would take a handful of grapes while grocery shopping, she told herself that the store could afford it with the prices they charged.  Our politicians rationalize their bad behavior with an excuse used by children since time began: “They started it.”  Cutting in line, breaking a promise, cursing someone out, fudging on taxes, getting someone fired for expressing the “wrong” opinion, physical or emotional violence — we are experts in justifying ourselves. 

Why do we do it?  We do it because we have to in order to believe we’re basically good people.  If we don’t we’re faced with two very distasteful scenarios. 

• We would have to acknowledge that we are being lawless with no good reason, which just makes us sociopaths.
• We would have to live with not satisfying whatever desire we have. 

Not surprisingly, the first story told to justify breaking a rule was told by the first people.  In Genesis Chapter 3, that wily serpent begins by placing doubt in Eve’s mind …”Did God really say….”  The rationalization train leaves the station, and chugs along until she arrives at her destination:  

 “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”

She and Adam knew the rule — the only rule — but they wanted that apple,.  So they told themselves a story.  “God didn’t really say…God didn’t really mean…Why wouldn’t He want me to have this beautiful thing?”  We’ve been doing it ever since.  

Now there are times when it is right to resist an unjust law.  But let’s not kid ourselves.  Very little of what we rationalize rises to the level of Gandhi or Harriet Tubman.  Perhaps if we asked ourselves who our “story” benefits it would become clear where it falls on the rationalization scale. If it’s only for your benefit or convenience or pleasure, I think it should give you pause.  

And so, with every news story warning of shortages of vaccines, or of impossible-to-get appointments, I heard the serpent’s voice whispering, “Go ahead, click that button.  What’s the harm?”

I didn’t listen, but there’s always next time.  He’s a wily one.  

Today is my Mom’s birthday.  She would have been 95 today.

Of course, I have no way of knowing she would have been 95.  I can’t say with any certainty that she would have lived to 55, much less 95.  Still, I am assuming that, but for the lung cancer that took her at 53, she would have survived to old(er) age. 

As it is, she is forever 53.

She is forever a mother to two young adult daughters, forever a wife of 28 years.  She is like a bug frozen in amber, when time stopped for her, and in some ways, for me too. 

Her death cleaved my life in two: from a mother’s child to a motherless one.   At 23, I was fresh out of college, in my first job, first apartment, first taste of what we now call “adulting.”  And suddenly, a great constant in my life was gone and I had to figure out life without her.

And I did, slowly, and often painfully. I found a career (then another, then another).  I found a husband.  I built my nest in my own home, something she never had.  Some things about my Life-After-Her she’d recognize.  I still do crosswords faithfully, just as we used to do together at the kitchen table.  I still watch old movies, and hold a special place in my heart for all those that were her favorites.

There are things that might surprise her, like my faith or the fact that I am one of those middle-aged suburban women that politicians have suddenly discovered, like a tribe deep in the Amazon, ripe for evangelizing. 

So on this day marking her birth, let me just say that Death stinks. It is the Great Thief, robbing us of so many good things, dividing our lives into Before and After, forever depriving us of possibilities of any forward motion — of healing, of continued love, of forgiveness in the relationship now severed.   Not only is she forever 53, but our relationship will always be only and exactly what it was on the day she died. 

Every Sunday during worship, I say these words:

“I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”

And I do believe that death will not have the last word.  But in the here and now there is pain and anger and frustration in death. Jesus knew this.  When his friend Lazarus died, He wept.  He knew that He was about to bring him back to life, but still, He wept.  He wept at the pain death causes. He wept at the waste.  He wept because our rebellion opened the door to this Great Thief. He wept because Death stinks. 

Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, I will share in His eternal life. But in His tears of grief over Lazarus’ death, I know that He knows my sorrow. There is great comfort in that.

Happy birthday, Mom.

My father’s name was Howie.

When my Mom called him for dinner, when my cousins greeted him, when my grandmother disparaged him behind his back, it was always “Howie.”  Howie was the silent, sitting- on-a-powder-keg-of rage, odd man out in our house full of women. His name was Howie and because I knew his name, I thought I knew him. 

My father’s name was Nicholas.

One day my father handed me my freshly signed report card with a name I didn’t recognize:  Nicholas. Who on earth was that?  And that was how I heard the story of the group of friends he hung out with when he was growing up— a group I always envisioned as Depression-era ragamuffins that were naughty but not really Bad.  There was another Nick in that group, and apparently, it wouldn’t do to have two, so they chose another name for my Dad. There was still plenty of discrimination against Italians in those days— my uncle changed his last name so he could get a good job on Wall Street — so maybe it isn’t so strange that given the choice, they chose something as all American as Howie.

Nicholas was the child of immigrants who were looked down on, eager to fit in, willing to give up his claim to his name in the cause of friendship and assimilation.

My father’s name was Angelo. 

One day when I was a teenager, I discovered that my father wasn’t Nicholas, either.  His name was Angelo. 

My uncle let it slip and explained that Angelo was a name my Dad hated, so as soon as he had any agency at all, he asked to be called by his middle name, Nicholas. It wasn’t until after he was gone that I understood why. 

A brittle yellow birth certificate, carelessly stored in a shopping bag in a dank basement, recorded my grandmother’s first-born sons — twins named Philip and Angelo. Now, I knew that  one of the twins had died in infancy, but I never knew his name.  My grandmother named her next son — my Dad — Angelo.  My father was named after a dead baby, long missed and mourned. 

Angelo was the child that never never felt good enough, was loathe to displease, and couldn’t wait to cast off the shroud he was made to wear. 

There are the names we are given. 

There are the names we give ourselves. 

And there is the name God gives us. 

And all of them define us, shape us, can be sources of pride or pain, conveying love or rebuke, revealing or concealing our true nature.  

Our birth names are given before anything is really known about us — whether we’re serious or goofy, exotic or run-of- the-mill.  Sometimes these names are nothing but a burden that is too heavy to bear, like being named after a dead baby.  

The names we acquire later in life define us as well. They can be nicknames — playful or cruel, loving or mocking. (Italians are famous for bestowing less than delightful nicknames. I actually had a relative that people called Cockeyed Mary — to her face.) After longing for a nickname as a child, I did acquire one as an adult, and I came to love it. 

Then there are the names that God gives us. Of course, He calls us His children, His beloved.  Sometimes God’s unique name for His child is revealed in this lifetime, like when Jacob is renamed Israel or Simon is renamed Peter — names that embody who they are to become. 

I believe that God has such a name for each of us, a name we might never know until we see Him face to face.  I imagine when my Dad died and was reunited with the One who created him, God didn’t call him Angelo, or Nicholas or even Howie.  These were names he was given, or gave himself.  But God, who knew my Dad before he was formed in the womb, had already given him his identity. 

I like to think that along with my new, resurrection body, God will greet me with the name I have had from the beginning, the name He has given me, the name I will recognize instantly when I hear it. I will know at once that with this name, God is recognizing and celebrating my essential nature and character.  The names I have been given, or have chosen for myself have served me well in this life.  But God’s name for me, well, that will be the keeper.